Jerry Cabrera, David Crismon, Rebecca Shewmaker
OPENING RECEPTION:
Saturday, August 30th 5PM – 8PM
August 30 – October 11
Jerry Cabrera — The Alchemy of Light
Jerry Cabrera’s Light Painting series captures the preciousness and sacredness of light through his glowing and vibrant rectangular canvasses. Although abstract, Cabrera’s stacked canvases give the viewer a visual escape and create the sensation of looking at a sunset or gazing through an open window from a dark place. Cabrera’s intent with these paintings is to, “give the viewer a narrow but vast window of light. Narrow enough not to physically fit through, but vast enough through which to visually escacpe.”
Cabrera lives and works in San Antonio, TX. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Texas State University and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Cabrera has exhibited nationally, and his work is included in several prominent collections, including Neiman-Marcus and the AT&T Center.
David Crismon — Dislocated Histories
In the 21st century we are inseparable from information. The continual flow of data in and around our lives has become seamless with our perception it. This is especially apparent with respect to our understanding of history. Technology renders history as something endlessly in flux, a mutable concept. Categories such as “past” or “history” are subject to investigation, reinterpretation, splicing, editing, and re-framing. Through these reiterations, various distortions and interferences of information are bound to occur, whether intended or not.
I feel it’s appropriate to use an 'old' process, such as painting, to address the current processes and technologies that are used to record our world. Systems employing artificial intelligence, digital imaging, scans, photocopies, and every other form of gathered data are only a small part of a much larger strata of visual surveillance that is employed in shaping ourselves and the world around us.
My works displace images from the past into the present. I wish to accentuate those distortions and changes, brought about by time and changing technologies. I try to reconstruct various historical works where some information has been duplicated, altered, or is missing altogether. It is not my intention to merely replicate the works from the past, but to alter these historical references to show history being transformed into a kind of abstract data; a painted image where neither the past nor the present exists without the interference of the other.
Rebecca Shewmaker uses sewing and embroidery techniques to create landscape paintings from fabric and thread. The Texas landscape inspires her work, and she spends many weekends visiting and photographing the places she depicts. Based on her experiences and photographs of the area, she stitches detailed textured landscapes on fabric.
Her creative process takes significant time and work so that she only produces a few paintings each month. She begins by dyeing cotton fabric for sky and land and then spends many hours sewing straight and zigzag stitches with a sewing machine. Threads are changed frequently to add color and tone to the image. To contrast the thread work, loose wool, dyed ribbons, or tulle are incorporated. French knots and straight stitches are hand embroidered to add more detail. She enjoys the slow, repetitive process of stitching and feels that this creates a sense of calm analogous to the quietness and beauty of the land itself.
Shewmaker holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Visual Arts from Rice University (2006) and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Intermedia from Texas Woman’s University (2018). While at Texas Woman’s, she received numerous merit awards, including the Catherine Cloud Edwards Scholarship and the Helen Thomas Perry Endowed Scholarship. She has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions in Dallas, Louisville, Houston, New Jersey, Indiana, and Georgia.
